Hair-raising Tale

Two Backpackers Have Searing Memories Of A Lightning `Splash`

September 01, 1991|By Bob O`Sullivan.

Sandy and Buck were made for each other. She calls him ``Big Fella,`` and he calls her ``his cute little 115 pounds of twisted blue steel.`` It`s appropriate; he`s big, she`s cute and they`re both cops.

At the time of the incident related here he was the lieutenant of the Narcotics Bureau in the Los Angeles County Sheriff`s Department and she was a deputy working vice. Besides, each other, what they really loved best were trips they took together and new experiences. ``But,`` said Sandy, ``Not all trips and not all new experiences.``

A few of us were sitting around talking about the places we`d gone and the things we`d done on our vacations. I`d just finished telling about a trip my wife and I had taken in a communist country-a series of small disasters-when Sandy said, ``Ha! Kid stuff. I`ve got the mother of all travel disasters. You want to hear about trouble, lemme tell you about what happened to me and Buck.``

A backpacking trip

The two of them had been planning a back-packing trip into Sequoia National Park which has mountains that top out over 13,000 feet. It was a little late in the year but law enforcement people don`t always get their time off in the summer, it being the ``busy season`` on the streets.

So in spite of what seemed to be deteriorating weather, they got their shiny new aluminum backpacks out of the garage, Sandy loaded up her emergency waterproof eye-makeup, Buck grabbed the hunting knife he`d made out of his old Marine Corp bayonet, they hopped in their 4-wheel drive vehicle and headed for the mountains.

They parked at the Ranger Station and started to hike into the wilderness. Lightning struck a couple of mountains away. Buck commented on how beautiful it was. Sandy said, ``Sure is.`` But she told Buck she was

``beginning to get a little antsy.``

``It could rain,`` she told him. ``You know how it can be with the flash floods.``

``Hey,`` said Buck. ``We`ll stay out of the washes and gullies. Walk the crest lines. You`re not hiking with some greenhorn, I know all about this stuff, kid.``

They hiked the crest lines as the sky went from a patchy blue to gun-metal gray. When it started to rain they stopped to put on their big yellow ponchos. Sandy couldn`t help thinking as Buck moved on ahead that he looked like a great horned owl with his poncho hiked up around the aluminum side rails of his back-pack. ``Hey, big fella,`` she called after him, ``I don`t think this is very wise.``

``Roll with it,`` he said. ``This is great.``

Warning from skies

They moved on ahead toward the top of a ridge. There was a crack and lightning hit a scrub oak on the side of the hill 300 yards away. Sandy grabbed her husband`s arm. ``Honey, I think maybe God is trying to tell us something.``

``Listen,`` said Buck. ``If the Big G wants to tell me something he knows right where he can find me.`` Sandy saw every hair on her husband`s head and arms standing straight out and noticed he was looking at her in astonishment. Just as he was about to speak there was suddenly a metallic smell in the air, a blast of light and a tremendous crash.

Sandy never found out how long she and Buck had been unconscious but it could not have been long because when she awoke, though the rain was heavy, everything was still smoldering. The backpack frames were molten aluminum puddles on the ground and Buck, mouth open yelling soundlessly was half sitting in the mud, slapping at the steam where the buttons had melted off his levis and his military style shirt.

He was also desperately trying to see where the home-made hunting knife which has been strapped to his hip had gone. Only the stag-horn handle remained; the blade and the sheath had been burned away.

Lucky to be alive

Sandy remembered yelling, ``Can we go home now?`` but she didn`t hear herself say it and neither did Buck. They were several hours getting their hearing back. Making it down the trail to their car, they had to support each other; their legs just didn`t seem to want to take orders.

Because the instant meltdown of Buck`s bayonet-hunting knife had produced a painful as well as embarrassing burn in the area where men tend to wear hunting knives, driving was a little trickier than it should have been.

``Besides,`` Sandy related, ``since neither of us was able to get our extremities to follow orders, it took two of us to get the car 20 miles down the mountain to a roadside diner. But,`` she went on, ``once there, it took only one of us to screw it up.``

Buck insisted on walking through the front door on his own. ``The moment we walked in,`` she said, ``everybody turned to look. I know we smelled like a rag fire and we must have looked like cartoon characters after a fire-cracker explosion but all these people in the diner just looked at us with their mouths hanging open.``

``I think,`` said Buck, to everybody at the counter, ``we`ve been struck by lightning.`` The people just sat there. ``I mean,`` said Buck, ``maybe we ought to see a doctor or something. Is there a hospital around here?``